Family of former B.C. politician angry at Clark

OSOYOOS, B.C. – The family of a one-time British Columbia Liberal is angry with Premier Christy Clark, stating they specifically requested his death not be announced in the legislature.

John Slater, 63, died unexpectedly last week and his passing was acknowledged by the premier who praised his community involvement and commitment to local farmers. A copy of her statement was later distributed to the media.

Sylvia Slater, John’s sister, posted a letter on Facebook where she said her family specifically asked that an announcement not be made.

According to Sylvia, within two hours of her brother’s death she had heard rumours of the planned announcement.

According to her cell phone records, she phoned the office of Boundary Similkameen MLA Linda Larson at 11:44 a.m. requesting that her family’s privacy be respected.

“Heedlessly at 1:32 p.m., Ms. Clark made a statement in the House about John’s death,” Sylvia wrote. “Could you have given us 24 hours, 12 hours, six hours? Could you have contacted a family member directly?”

In an interview, Slater said the family should have been contacted as to if and when a statement could be made. She said fortunately all family members learned of John’s death prior to reading it in the media.

“He was a brother, father, uncle, nephew and son. To others, he was a friend and to many more he was a public figure and servant. My question is, where is the line that deems on relationship more important than another and whose needs in a relationship should be first considered?”

She acknowledged that her brother was a public figure but noted he had been out of office since 2012.

“Shame on you Ms. Clark for again, not putting a family first,” she wrote.

Born in Kelowna, John Slater moved to Osoyoos in 1980 where he operated several businesses including Desert Edge Nursery. Slater served on Osoyoos Town Council for 18 years including six years as mayor.

He retired as mayor to seek the B.C. Liberal nomination and was elected as Boundary Similkameen’s representative in 2009, serving one term. He was not endorsed by the party for the 2013 election and dropped out of public life.

Slater is survived by his daughters Tina and Alana and siblings Sylvia, Laura and Kim as well as several nieces and nephews. Predeceased are his son Christopher and his parents.

Sylvia said funeral arrangements will be finalized on Tuesday. (Penticton Herald)

6 comments on “Family of former B.C. politician angry at Clark”

Clark is a sorry excuse for a leader. What you must remember is she is not well educated so probably missed a lot of skills needed for the job. She was after all a radio talk show host …. that doesn’t qualify you to be a premier of a province. And besides that she was once education Minister and look how she treats education. Harris of Ontario treated education with distain also by appointing a high school dropout Minister of Education. She is an embarrassment for a Liberal because she is not one. The so called ‘Liberal’ party in B.C. is nothing but a bunch of greedy business people who are emptying the Treasury as fast as they can. The people that gave them a majority deserve what they get.

“Clark graduated from Burnaby South Senior Secondary[5]before attending Simon Fraser University (SFU), the Sorbonne in France and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland[6] to study Political Scienceand Religious Studies.[7][8]”

Her wikipedia entry specifically states that she graduated from high school (Burnaby south senior) but does not state that she graduated from even just a BA in political science and religion from 3 different universities on 2 continents. It just states that she attended them on those undergraduate studies. On Wikipedia, it will always say that you graduated with whatever degree offered. It will never not fail to mention that… unless you didn’t graduate.

Clark was ejected from SFU after failing to pay a fine for cheating in her electoral campaign after winning presidency of the student council. Her campaign team has never been able to confirm whether she graduated from the Sorbonne or Edinburgh.

The BC NDP were supposed to win in a landslide, for a year straight before that last BC election, according to the 308 website. Too many voters just didn’t show up on election day, thinking that it was all in the bag. That was what I kept reading afterwards.